The invention relates to a system for the data management of a thermal spraying apparatus, in particular of a thermal spraying apparatus with a spray gun, and a method for the data management of a thermal spraying apparatus, in particular of a thermal spraying apparatus with a spray gun.
Thermal coating apparatuses such as thermal spraying apparatuses are used nowadays in many industrial manufacturing areas in order to coat substrates. Typical substrates include for example workpieces with curved surfaces such as the cylinder running surfaces of combustion engines, a plurality of semi-finished goods such as components on which a corrosion protection is applied by means of the thermal spraying before the further surface treatment, but also essentially planar substrates such as wafers and foils onto which a coating is sprayed or applied by vapor deposition. A plurality of further applications is additionally known to the person averagely skilled in the art. For example, apparatuses for plasma spraying, high velocity flame spraying (HVOF), flame spraying and arc spraying belong to the familiar thermal spraying apparatuses. The thermal spraying apparatuses have in common the fact that they each include a separate spraying device with a torch, which will be referred to in the following as a spray gun. In English, the spray gun is mainly termed a gun. The term spray gun primarily refers to the function and not to the actual shape, which can differ from the shape of a gun or pistol.
Process parameter monitoring in conventional thermal spraying devices is restricted, if monitoring of this kind is provided at all, to a few factors such as, for example, electrical current, the electrical voltage or the electrical power in plasma guns and arc spraying guns or the pressure of a gas supply, which are respectively detected at the corresponding power or gas supply. Furthermore, there are designs in which measuring lines are present for the measurement of the electrical voltage at the gun, with the conversion and evaluation of the voltage taking place in a different part of the thermal spraying apparatus at a safe distance from the spray gun.
A plasma spraying apparatus is described in the document EP-A-1 635 623 in which an operating state is monitored by means of a pressure sensor. The described plasma spraying apparatus includes a plasma spray gun to which spray powder is supplied during spraying by means of a transport gas. The pressure sensor is arranged in a transport gas line or in the line which is used for the supply of the spray powder and serves to detect faulty operating conditions, such as blockages in the spray powder supply for example.
A more advanced process monitoring has not been provided in prior art thermal spraying apparatuses. Thus, for example, a monitoring by which the detection and storing of process parameters and/or of operating conditions at and/or in the spray gun is effected has not previously taken place. Due to the gun necessary for thermal spraying, the environmental conditions at or in the spray gun seem poorly suited to the use of electronic circuits for the detection and storing of process parameters and operating conditions. Thus, depending on the type of torch used in the spray guns, high voltages, high currents and/or high fields could arise. Additionally the temperatures produced by the guns and the remaining environmental conditions in the industrial use of the spray guns pose a potential danger for electronic components. Furthermore, current spray guns for thermal spraying apparatuses are built as compactly as possible, so that there is little space available in them for a detection and storing of process parameters.